


Free As The Rent We Don't Pay

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death Fix, Desperation, F/M, Resurrection, Supernatural Season 05, This is going to go horribly wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody tells Kali what she is capable of.</p><p>Post-Hammer of the Gods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free As The Rent We Don't Pay

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after [05.19 Hammer of the Gods](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=5.19_Hammer_of_the_Gods).
> 
> I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm intended.

The Winchesters are a menace and Kali wants to be far away from them. She no longer even wants to carry their meddlesome guts on her shoes, she just wants _away_.

This feeling grows stronger when she's in their... their _vehicle_ , which exudes a subtle menace itself. When she's in the damn thing, her dread grows a little stronger. This car is a dangerous object. This stupid car can be used to hurt and heal. This damn thing has powers that mute her own.

Dean pulls over after putting seven exits between themselves and Lucifer. Kali steps out, pulls two vials from her pocket, and dashes them on the wet asphalt.

Sam watches their blood leak away between the glass shards and looks up her long legs to Kali's dark eyes.

"T-thanks," he says.

"You're going to die, anyway," she says, and does not wait for Sam Winchester's face to fall any further before she disappears.

«»

They carried with them a message from Gabriel. She tells herself it was none of her business and she does not care what it was.

She _tells herself_ this.

Anyway, she will never again stray close enough to the Winchesters to find out what it was. And she maintains that she will not return to the hotel to discover the outcome of Gabriel's quarrel with his brother. It would be unwise. Lucifer could easily monitor the location for any returning god or mortal curious of the same.

If Satan were the one to lose, the whole world would know in short time. As it is, a curious mortal returns to the hotel days later and alerts police to the bodies rotting inside.

The vessel's body is recovered by local authorities and is among those others that "have not been identified" by kin.

She closes the newspaper and finishes her tea. She stacks reasons for going to claim the body against reasons not to.

It is close enough. Kali was forced to return to small-town Indiana to even so much as read a report on the "grisly discovery" made at The Elysian Fields Hotel. Confining herself to this horrible little coffee shop was easier than convincing herself that she didn't care. Now, with each revelation, she must decide how much she should not care.

The vessel. The means of destroying it. The benefit to her in having the body destroyed. Returning to the hotel and killing her curiosity. Removing a weapon from police evidence that could possibly destroy an archangel. Protecting the humans who still venerate her. Removing herself from the planet immediately to prevent her own death.

Every time she finds another reason to stay involved, she must remind herself that Loki was a traitor. She was played. She owes nothing to anyone. The world will end in a fire she won't even have to build by herself.

She rises, moves to leave. She will leave this state, this country, and will not risk even a peek at the evidence locker in Muncie, Indiana.

Kali still has a black skirt with a palm-full of blood swiped across it.

It is exhausting to be this _careless_.

«»

Some time later, over a gin in a London hotel, she decides to burn the skirt.

In Indiana, later that day, she learns the resting place of the unnamed victims of the Elysian Hotel massacre.

She plants her stiletto heels in the dirt outside the graveyard. Now that she knows where it is, has marked it, is watching it, no one will dare meddle with the vessels inside. There is no need to go in.

Standing over graves is for people who have respects to pay.

«»

There is not a single thing she could do if she wanted to. Kali destroys, Kali does not create. Kali does not resurrect. Kali does not even forgive.

Months after the world is quiet again, their enemy back in his little locked box, she is having a cappuccino outside of Rome after a visit with Bellona. A few seats down, there is a thin woman at a table by herself, devouring the gelateria across the square with her eyes, verbally _convincing herself_ that she does not eat chocolate, she does not eat chocolate, she _does not eat chocolate_.

«»

There is no one who would help her, anyway. The members of her own family all know of Loki's deceit, now. They have been apprised of the situation that led to Ganesha's death.

Kali knows time and she knows change and she knows that death is a part of all of this. The wounds of war may heal, people may grow from receiving them, but this does not make her a healer. New times may be birthed of the destruction of the old but this does not make her a giver of life.

Still, the idea festers and begins to grow teeth. The fact of the matter is that she has Gabriel's blood, she will not part with it. If she has not kept it to command him back into the world, she has kept it for no purpose at all.

She doesn't shed her heels in Jerusalem, does not bow her head or tone down the reds in her dress. She walks into the tomb with arms crossed, as if someone had forced her to go.

Mother Mary doesn't answer when Kali calls, anyway. Kali visits other holy sites, churches built in the name of Mary, crying statues, shrines, and nothing. Kali can't find her.

Who but a mother could call forth an angel from the dead?

«»

It's mid-October if she's being generous with herself. In reality, it's late October and much too late to be in Mexico. Yet here she sits having _un atole_ and who should sit across from her and order the same but Death himself.

He crosses his legs neatly, balances his cane upon a knee. "You're going to do something stupid," he says, pronouncing every letter in the word, s-t-u-p-i-d.

A prim dab at her mouth with a napkin is her entire reply.

"I escorted him from the premises myself. It was a very big job. A very _final_ job. Wouldn't want to make it look like I wasn't doing _my job_ , now would you?"

"If this is going to devolve into threats you can absolutely just _save it_."

He politely accepts his mug and plate from a serving woman with the faintest of smiles. She high-tails it back to her husband's side near the kitchen, her eyes never leaving them.

"We have done plenty of good work together in the past." He sips for a moment. "Leave this one. If he were meant to return, he would have been returned. Like his young brother in the overcoat. The slippery little shit."

She sits back, considering him, spooning the dregs of her mug.

They are not enemies. And one day, through her own effort, she will fall upon his sythe herself. 

That day is not any time soon.

"Día de los Angelitos," Kali says. "It is the day before el Día de los Muertos."

He frowns slowly as if the atole is not to his taste. Shakes his head only once. Somewhat sadly.

Miserable old scarecrow. All he does, all he _is_ is sad and withered. And pathetic. And gone.

Kali rises from her seat and _she_ is _gone_.

«»

Kali confirms that the Angel of Thursday lives. It was no jest; one angel was given his life back, others who should be dead languish in a lock-box in hell.

The vessel's grave lay still and undisturbed. The one she wishes returned to her is not.

She cannot keep herself away from the sour dirt of Muncie for more than a week at a time. The idea taunts her. She sees the holes her heels left in the dirt on her previous visit every time she goes back.

The facts are these:  
She has the power to revive the connection to Loki-- to Gabriel.  
She can pull him out of the nothing and restore him to life.  
She needs a viable vessel for him or to fix the vessel that could once contain him.  
She is not supposed to do this. She is not supposed to fix things.

She will do this if she is meant to or not.

«»

She makes one last effort to secure assistance. No one in her own family, no god on her level, will help her with this. There are no longer enough of them _alive_ to help her with this.

And they _would not_. They absolutely would not.

She is at the shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe. Kali holds herself still, a palm over an elbow, and she looks to the sky. And into each corner. And upon the crosses and patrons and into the eyes of the religious. She sees nothing. No one will help her here.

No one will **help** her. She wants to bring their angel back, wants to breathe what life she can back into this world and there is no one she can look to for a path.

There is a man here with his family. A messenger. A radio DJ, to be precise, escorting and shushing his two nieces behind his brother and sister-in-law. His Sunday suit on. Laugh lines deep in his face. He is handsome and kind and a messenger. When he hands the girls off to their mother so she can help them light candles, he steps back and looks on at them fondly.

Kali steps forth, out of the dark, and curls many fingers around his neck.

Mary will hear about _this_ , at least. It will be too late when she does.

«»

In Muncie it is raining. It is dark and pouring. She forces the man to his knees on the dirt over the oft-disturbed grave and he screams and cries for her to stop.

"Where am I? What is this? What are you do--" he screams wordlessly when she slices into his neck. She coats her hands in the blood and ties the messenger to herself.

With two of her hands, she holds the black skirt above her head. The rain soaks through and the blood animates on her skin. With two of her hands, she holds the man kneeling below her and brings their blood together. She says her words, strangles him with them, and drinks away the sky into herself, rips open space to where there is nothing. To where the angels go when they die. From this blank space steps Loki, her angel, and the nothing comes up again and closes behind him. Her arms surround him, tie him up tight and weld him into the frame of the messenger in his sodden clothes. He gasps when his neck knits together and his voice is pure, heavenly, loving, joyful. Gabriel.

When Kali pulls herself back into her own vessel, is mindful enough to feel herself on the earth again, she puts her spare palms away and uses just the two to caress his face. He coughs the blood out of his mouth and into the mud, between her shoes. Gabriel's eyes rise up and find her face. Cold, triumphant.

He is soundless. Face a stone. Eyes disbelieving and wide. She curls his head to her torso and runs her nails through his hair. Gently as she tries, she still draws thin lines of blood. He grips a loose hand around her ankle and she smiles to herself.

His voice will be back in time. His bold body and reverence for her. His love for her. His wild spirit. She will take him away to Europa or some other distant moon where they can watch this planet tear itself apart from afar. Just as he had promised her in whispers so long ago.

She whispers to him, now, how she has saved him and will not let him go again without a fight. No one left alive anymore on this planet strong enough to fight them both.

Deep in his eyes, the old grace within him is still closed off to her. After she pulls him to his feet, burns away the dirt and blood, cleanses him, he is still a bit too far away from her. And quiet. Quiet.

And this will change in time, she assures herself with ancient confidence. Everything changes.

His entire being may shudder out of his bones sometimes, his vessel may bleed and scar. May begin to start boiling and burning.

But everything will be how it was, she tells herself. His vessel cannot contain his voice, so he cannot agree with her aloud. So she tells herself he does. She _tells herself_ that he knows.


End file.
